Derived Observations From Frequently Sampled Microwave Measurements of Precipitation—Part III: Convoys of mm-Wave Radiometers

Abstract

This is the third of three papers that quantify the high added value of frequent satellite microwave observations of the atmosphere (with a “refresh” time on the order of one minute) to capture the dynamics of weather systems. Recent advances in small-satellite and microwave miniaturization, such as the “Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical systems” (TempEST) millimeter-wave radiometer developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, are paving the way for the design of convoys of spaceborne radars that can directly observe the evolution of severe weather at very fine temporal scales. The analyses presented here are to establish the relation between passive microwave observations and their change in time and the underlying cloud variables and processes, and to evaluate the sensitivity to the different physical and instrument parameters. In this third part, simulations are used to demonstrate and quantify the direct sensitivity of a time sequence of mm-wave radiances to the vertical structure of the vertical updrafts in convective storms. It is demonstrated that the brightness temperatures from a pair of low-Earth-orbit radiometers maintaining a separation of one or two minutes can indeed be used to retrieve the column-maximum magnitude of the vertical wind as well as the height of the maximum. While such passive retrievals do not provide the vertical detail that a pair of radars would produce, the radiometers have a vast swath and therefore enable the observation of an entire storm. The application is therefore quite different from the case of a convoy of radars: rather than compiling radar statistics over multiple years, the radiometer-convoy measurements can be used to analyze every storm that is observed.